PZ Myers on Modern Day Isaacs

As most of those close to me know, one of my biggest beefs with the Christian Bible and its doctrine is the story of God's demand of Abraham of a blood sacrifice of his son Isaac. Not only is the Judeo-Christian God shown to be unbelievably cruel and sadistic, Abraham's blind faith in God leads him to the brink of an equally cruel and sadistic act: sacrificing his own son.

PZ Myers has been all over the story of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year old boy who has been so brainwashed by his mom that he has 'decided' he doesn't want chemotherapy for his Hodgkins lymphoma, a treatment with high degree of success. In his latest post on the subject, driven by the news that Hauser's mother has taken the boy and fled to locations unknown in order to avoid judge-appointed treatment, Myers assaults the mindset that leads to this sort of behavior, a 'Modern Day Isaac' mentality.

What she has done has gone even deeper. Daniel is 13 years old; he has been tested for his competency, and has been found to be completely illiterate. He was homeschooled. Colleen Hauser has been wielding the sacrificial dagger of her faith on her son for years, crippling his brain and rendering him unable to evaluate the real-world consequences of their decisions. I wonder how many Daniel Hausers there are in this country, living lives of quiet ignorance, unexposed by the trauma of a physical disease?

And here's the real tragedy: Colleen Hauser almost certainly loves her son and believes she is doing what is best for him, every step of the way. I can identify with her in that regard — I can understand that deep, gut-wrenching love a parent can have for her children, the kind that can put you to your knees with agony at every little hurt they suffer…and Daniel Hauser faces deeper pain and an imminent threat of death that my kids have never had. But Colleen Hauser is so afflicted with the poison of religion that she has lost sight of reality, and is going to kill her son with her ignorance.

Go read the rest. Myers puts it much better than I can, and his analysis is spot on with what I feel about this blatantly evil part of Christianity.

The worst part of the Abraham story isn't even that Abraham was willing to follow god's order to kill his son. Worse still is that the reason he was willing to follow the order is because he thought that ritual human sacrifice was consistent with the nature and character of his god. Otherwise, he would've thought he was being deceived and not done it.

Worse yet, this is taught as a parable that people revere. People aspire to have that kind of faith when they say "God is the most important thing in my life." Really, that being that you can't see, can't converse with or fully understand is the most important? Sigh...